Few things make you feel as lucky to live in New York as being around artists at the beginning of their careers. This is certainly the case with ELEGIE, a nascent theater company founded this past summer by Kara Gordon with an inventive production of Jean Genet’s The Maids. The show, which follows two housemaids with dreams of overthrowing their rich ‘Madame,’ is a formidable text by itself, but ELEGIE elevates it even still. One can tell they are bright things in their future.
ELEGIE owes a lot of this promise to director Kyle Dunn, whose creative insertions shape Genet’s script into something of their own. Take, for instance, the moment when the lights in The Tank’s Attic rehearsal space (where the show first ran in July) are turned off, plunging the audience into total darkness.
One of the maids, Solange (portrayed by Gordon herself), is lit by a single flashlight which she alternatively points at audience members and herself. While aiming it between her legs, she suddenly starts to stroke, transforming the tool into a phallus and drawing out the show’s subtextual sexuality. This entire scene – the dark, Solange by herself, the masturbation – reminds us how invigorating work by a director with a vision can be.
Genet is not performed in New York as much as he should be, perhaps because he is not an easy writer. The Maids begins, for example, with maid Claire (Mari Sitner) pretending to be Madame, leaving the audience momentarily confused. It would be easy for Madame (Sam Besca) to be a reductive villain, as it would be easy for the play to be a simple class allegory, neither is the case– Genet revels in complexity. The maids hate Madame
but they also want to become her. Genet understands, as the best artists do, that truth requires paradox.
The Ma ids could have come and gone like most other Off Off-Off-Broadway shows. L
uckily for audiences, however, it’s back this fall playing an extended run as a part of the Circle Theater festival. It is worth seeing – not just as a revival of a classic, but a testament to the vibrancy of New York’s scrappy theater scene.
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